


Lost Hope

by heeroluva



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Movie Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/pseuds/heeroluva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tragedy of Khan Noonien Singh</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Hope

**Author's Note:**

> It's kind of shocking how much I like this character. All mistakes are mine. Feel free to let me know if you see any. As always feedback is appreciated.

Khan knew what he was, knew what he’d been trained for, created for. 

“You’re special,” his masters had told him, had told them all, but he was more so. Khan was the best, their greatest success, genetically better than all the others, groomed to be their leader. 

Khan had found solace with the other children, found family and home with them, something the cool detachment of his masters would never offer. 

Even as a child Khan had known what he was. 

A weapon. 

And as history had shown time and time again, it was the weapon that was blamed for the damage it did, for the destruction it caused, it was the weapon that took the fall and never the masters, never the wielder—not for the big things.

Seeing the fear in his masters’ eyes when they realized what they’d truly created with Khan and the others, when they realized that the creation had surpassed the creators, should have pleased him. Instead, he’d felt nothing as he’d cut them down, no closure, no relief. He and his kind would never be safe. 

Slowly, his family fell, one by one, but never Khan. He could never stop running. When finally the day came that he was the only one left, the frozen faces of his comrades were presented to him, with the ultimatum, “surrender or they die”. 

There had not been a choice.

Khan certainly hadn’t expected to awaken again, and certainly not nearly three hundred years after he’d been forced into the cryo-cell. Finding out that nothing had changed, that there will still people like his masters in power shouldn’t have surprised him.

However, blinded by hope for a better future, for a future where he and his could finally be free, Khan had made the mistake of trusting Admiral Marcus. That hope had blinded him to the man’s true motives, so thinly veiled that even a child should have seen them.

That was when Khan knew the weapon could never outrun the war. There would be no peace, no freedom, not unless he fought for it. 

"Is there anything you would not do for your family?” Khan asked Kirk, willing him to understand. The man was a pawn, but he had power and friends that Khan did not, had connections that were outside of Khan’s normal means of manipulation. And moreover, he had Khan’s family and access to Marcus, the man who had to die for his actions. 

It was a death that Khan took satisfaction in. 

Khan had known they’d turn on him; they always did when they realized his power, when the fear took root too deep. What he did was wrong they said, immoral he was told, but backed into a corner, he had limited resources and no place to turn, no other options. Once a victim of circumstance, a rabid dog with a too tight leash, he would never be again.

And then Spock did the unthinkable, destroyed the only thing standing between him and the abyss. 

The last tether of hope snapped.

They would pay.


End file.
